in Switzerland
Barth’s theology cannot be properly understood without reference to his socialistic activity and Swiss religious socialism. His “Socialist Speeches” and activity until the outbreak of World War I—as has been described above—are themselves reflective of liberal theology, especially when dealing with a relation between theology and political praxis. However, after the war he made a new departure by breaking with his liberal background. To further appreciate Barth’s theology and social praxis after the war, it is first necessary to look at the movement of religious socialism in Switzerland. For understanding the development of religious socialism in Switzerland, it is worthwhile to take note of a historical event beginning with Christoph F. Blumhardt (1842–1919). Although Blumhardt is not depicted as a religious socialist in an authentic sense, the movement of religious socialism in Switzerland has one point of departure in him. Representatives of Swiss religious socialism such as Kutter and Ragaz were strongly influenced by Christoph Blumhardt. Blumhardt, properly understood, is both an example and father of religious socialism in Switzerland. Ragaz, in his book Der Kampf um das Reich Gottes in Blumhardt, Vater und Sohn, und weiter! is full of honor and respect for Blumhardt.
Blumhardt is spiritually and theologically related to his father, Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880). In his parish at Moettlingen the elder Blumhardt was involved for two years in a process of healing a woman who suffered a high degree of hysteria as seen from a medical perspective. As she was healed, a voice sounded out: “Jesus is victor.” Thus, Jesus’s victory became the grounding principle for his healing work in light of the kingdom of God. For him, the kingdom of God had a strong cosmic and apocalyptic dimension rather than being confined to an individualistic and pietistic realm of salvation. The presently real quality of the kingdom of God was bound up with the incarnation of Jesus Christ. However, the reality of the kingdom of God was not restricted to the historical Jesus, but after the ascension the kingdom of God broke into the world in which the healing of a possessed woman was regarded as a sign of God’s in-breaking reality. What is important is that hope for the kingdom of God and the voice that said “Jesus is victor” was understood as an immanent concretization of God’s kingdom.
According to the elder Blumhardt, the kingdom of God is not shortened or reduced to a spiritual, otherworldly salvation of the soul but is sharpened in concrete-physical and social-material realms. This tendency to integrate the material arena and concrete content into the movement of God’s kingdom finds a strong expansion in the younger Blumhardt. In 1852 Johann Blumhardt moved from Moettlingen to the retreat house in Bad Boll.
After the death of his father, Blumbhardt placed a new accent on his father’s watchword, “Jesus is victor.” Beyond a healing ministry in Bad Boll, Blumbhardt made a radical turn to the world. As Blumbhardt stressed, “The kingdom of God comes to the street where the poorest, the most offended and the most miserable are. There the kingdom of God comes.”143 For Blumhardt, God is directed toward the world in spite of its sinfulness. With a social turn Blumhardt found the effect of the kingdom of God in the socialist movement in which he sees the life of humans occupying a place of utmost importance. Without falling into replacing the kingdom of God with socialism, Blumbhardt discerned a sign of God’s in-breaking reality in the socialist movement for the sake of humanity. “The purpose of God is this-worldly” makes Blumhardt’s direction so explicit that God is the starting point and the ground for the redemption of the world, not the other way around. God is related to the this-worldly dimension (that is, to the material realm) so radically that according to Blumhardt, revolution can become a word of God.144
In 1899 Blumhardt arrived at a practical consequence from his understanding of God’s kingdom. In protest against Wilhelm II, he joined the SPD. His entrance into the Social Democratic Party in Germany was not meant to be a sign of his interest in the politics of the party but an expression of his fundamental solidarity with the poor and a practical performance of his idea of the kingdom of God. After Blumhardt’s speech in Göppingen (in June 1899), Eugster-Zuest founded the textile union (Webeverband) in Apenzell, Switzerland. In December 1900, Blumhardt was elected to the Social Democratic Congress in Württemberg. Then in 1889 Kutter came into contact with Blumhardt and paid visits to Bad Boll.
Hermann Kutter
In December 1902 when Hermann Kutter (1863–1931) published his work Das Unmittelbare: Eine Menschheitsfrage, he was a pastor at Neumunster in Zurich (between 1899 and 1926). Under the influence of Blumhardt, his work appeared as a philosophical interpretation of Blumhardt’s thought. He characterizes the new life as the living God revealed in Jesus Christ. A turning away from the pure speculative theology to immediacy is identical with a return to the living God or, in the sense of Blumhardt, to the kingdom of God. In this light Kutter noticed in Social Democracy a will to social change, an in-breaking reality of immediacy into an incomplete and deficient society.
In his book Das Unmittelbare, there is a positive evaluation of the socialistic movement inspired by Blumhardt. The protest of Social Democracy against the old authority, its struggle for a better social order, and its utopia of a new community are, for Kutter, signs of the living God. In a sense, the work of Ragaz was connected to the emergence of Kutter’s theology. In April 1903 Ragaz preached a sermon that came to be known as the “Bricklayers’ Strike Sermon.” In December of the same year, Kutter’s prophetic voice was manifest in his book Sie Müssen! Ein offenes Wort an die christliche Gesellschaft (They Must! An Open Word to Christian Society) (1905).
In September 1906 Ragaz gave his important speech “Das Evangelium und der soziale Kampf der Gegenwart” (“The Gospel and the Current Social Struggle”) to a gathering of Swiss pastors. In it Ragaz scrutinized the social class struggle and challenged Christians to get involved in the movement of social justice. In October 1906 the first conference of Swiss religious socialism in Degesheim occurred. Finally, in November of the same year the first issue of Neue Wege was released.145 Given this fact, the religious socialism of Switzerland was developed first of all through the influence of Kutter and Ragaz (1868–1945) in 1906. Their journal Neue Wege appeared, bearing the strong influence of Ragaz, its founder and editor. The Freie Schweitzer Arbeiter, edited by Gustav Benz and Otto Lautenburg, was the other voice of religious socialism. Although a socially and politically liberal pastor in Basel, Benz rejected Social Democracy, unlike Ragaz, who had already joined the SPS in 1913.
At any rate, the religious socialist movement in Switzerland was greatly indebted to Kutter’s books, Sie Müssen! (1905) and Wir Pfarrer (1907), in which the message of Blumhardt played an important role. Although Das Unmittelbare remained—because of philosophical language—without great effect to the readers, Kutter’s book Sie Müssen! aroused great public attention. He argues that God takes sides with Social Democracy, not with the church. In his analysis of society, Kutter defended the political interest of Social Democracy against charges and attacks from the side of church. What is to be fought against is not Social Democracy but the Christian society that had abetted social injustice and misery. “The Social Democrats are revolutionary, because God is there. They must be forward, because God’s kingdom must be forward. They are people of revolution, because God is the great over-thrower.”146 The atheism, materialism, and internationalism of Social Democracy are no less than a protest of Christian society and conventions that have fallen into mammonism. The kingdom of God breaks in with the social democrats into the society. “Class struggle is a necessity provoked through mammon . . . The contradiction of classes is such that fighting has become not only necessary, but also the essence of humanity.”147 Social Democracy becomes God’s instrument that denies the existing social order. They must. They cannot do otherwise. “The most violent revolutionary is the living God.” He is the overthrower without reservation at all.148
